Local temperatures approached record highs in early February, raising suspicion that this year’s “Godzilla” El Niño may have more bark than bite on the Central Coast.
Last month, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert told the Sun that February alone could see a year’s worth of rainfall. Feb. 1 pulled through, dropping more than an inch of rain on some parts of the county—but so far, that’s it.
David Gomberg, meteorologist at Oxnard’s National Weather Service office, said Patzert wasn’t alone in his theory. January storms had most weather experts predicting even wilder rain for February.
“Everyone across the board was thinking that February is typically one of the wettest months, and with El Niño getting going, what we saw in January seemed like a preview,” Gomberg said. “But the pattern has shifted this week.”
In fact, the pattern seems to have reversed. Recent temperatures in Santa Maria reached the 80s, sneaking up on February heat records and creating fire risks.
Gomberg said the dry spell would most likely continue for the foreseeable future, with one small exception.
“There’s a little system in the middle of next week that should bring a little bit of rain,” he said. “Right now it looks like a pretty weak system, but it might bring some light rain.”
Still, Gomberg said, El Niño is out there.
“Out in the Pacific, the pattern we would like to see during an El Niño is there,” he said. “It’s got a powerful jet stream that’s developing, and we’d like to see that bring weather systems into California. The problem is it’s just not reaching far enough east.”
But Northern California and the Pacific Northwest have recently seen some above-average rainfall, Gomberg said. He added that the state’s southern half shouldn’t give up hope yet.
“The El Niño is still there,” he said. “It’s still strong. Sometimes these patterns happen. We’ve seen this in other rainy years, where you get these bursts of good storms and then a dry stretch for a few weeks, and then another surge.”
Gomberg said an El Niño season could last into April or May, meaning it could potentially bring some late rainfall.
“We don’t want to give up completely on the fact that we could still get a pretty good storm,” he said.
This article appears in Feb 11-18, 2016.